You probably forgot all about those Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Just a figment of Bush's imagination and a product of bad intelligence. But he's probably going to get revenge on all of his critics. There's a growing body of evidence that not only do the WMD's exist, but that they were all relocated to Syria just before the invasion. Chinese intelligence was aware of this transfer. There's a further body of evidence growing that Al Qaeda and Iraq did indeed have some pretty close ties. For instance, Iraq provided significant financial support for the Phillipine rebel movement, which are under the direct control of Al Qaeda.

Why have these revelations taken so long to uncover? During the invasion, troops confiscated mountains of paperwork. Credit card receipts. Family photos. Old magazines. Insurance policies. Think about it - what do you keep in your file cabinets? This completely overwhelmed the 2 or 3 Arabic translators with sufficient security clearance to review them all. It's literally taken years to dig through all these documents and find the handful that actually contain useful information. 

The downside of all of this is that it could require a military foray into Syria to produce the physical evidence. 

Have to hand it to CNN - which looks like the first major US news organization with the cajones to declare 'Global Warming is the real deal.'. 

This of course clashes with official government policy, which is that global warming is a myth perpetuated by tree-hugging enivronmentalists in order to deprive Americans of their constitutional right to guzzle gas - which would deprive Exxon and Saudi Arabia of their constitutional right to make lots of money.  

So don't bet on the US signing Kyoto or ever showing any leadership on the issue. It's up to you and me.   

The FBI is getting close to awarding a contract for Project Sentinel, the showcase of their technology upgrade. Looks like the bidding is only open to two companies - Lockheed Martin being one of them. Cost of the project is estimated to be around a half a billion dollars.

And what are they buying for all this money? A relational database. Lockheed Martin can build some pretty good airplanes and satellites, but databases? Server farms? I wonder what the cost would be if they opened the bidding to folks who actually have experience building scaleable information systems...

By my calculations, we've got approximately 34 more months left of the idiot...

tick, tock, tick, tock

But then what are we in for next? President Hillary? Ouch. About the only thing we know for sure is that she won't be doing obscene things with interns and cigars. Oops. I take that back. We don't know anything. For all we know, Bob (Can't Get It Up) Dole will run for president against Bill (Would You Buy a Used Operating System From This Man?) Gates, and Tom (Scientology Rules, By the Way I'm an Alien) Cruise will win because Hillary got caught doing obscene things with interns and cigars. If you're gonna' try and predict the future, chances are pretty high you're gonna' be wrong, so you might as well make it interesting. 

After four years, the government finally released a few transcripts of hearings from Guantanamo that contained names of detainees. It wasn't a list. It was just a few transcripts where the names haven't been blacked out as they normally are. This is in response to a Freedom of Information claim by the Associated Press. 

It has been four years now. Only ten of the 490 detainees have been charged with a crime. Most of the rest of them just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Afghanistan, during the invasion.

The Russians have a word for indefinite imprisonment for undefined political crimes by unspecified people.

Gulag.